Hot or Not: How to Sell ‘Sex With Strangers’

For its production of Laura Eason’s two-hander about the frisky relationship between a female novelist and a younger male blogger, TheaterWorks, a theater company in Hartford, is featuring promotional artwork with a shirtless man embraced by an obscured woman. The title covers his chest. Her hand covers his stomach.

Harmless beefcake stuff, right?

“We had one woman, an attorney, threaten us with a restraining order if we ever mailed anything to her again,” Freddie McInerney, the theater’s director of marketing and communications, said. “She was deeply offended by the combination of the imagery and the title.”

It hasn’t been all bad news for the production, which closes on Sunday, April 17. “Folks in the lobby love grabbing extra postcards as keepsakes,” Ms. McInerney said. “That’s a good sign.”

Since it had its premiere in 2011 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, “Sex With Strangers” has become one of the most produced plays in the country, helped by strong reviews (Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called it “twisty and timely”), a small cast and a provocative title.

Theaters have taken usually one of two routes to promote it: with either a G-rated illustration or an R-leaning photograph, usually of the two actors, as Second Stage did for its 2014 production with Anna Gunn and Billy Magnussen. (At some theaters stand-ins were used in the photo if the production hadn’t been cast by the time a season was announced.) Public reaction to the play, in which sex takes place offstage, has ranged from silence to indignation.

Below is a look at art for six regional productions this season, with rankings of where the images land on a totally unscientific 1-to-5 (not to hot) Steamy Scale.

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CreditGeffen Playhouse

Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles

Steamy Scale: 1

“We wanted to come up with an image that spoke to meeting someone in a bar,” said Brian Dunning, the Geffen’s graphic design manager. The image is a photo of a whiskey glass and napkins that was later treated digitally with bright colors to give it a pop feel. The pink and blue allude to a male-female dynamic. The two crumpled-up napkins suggest that “the women in Ethan’s life are disposable,” Mr. Dunning said.

The theater decided not to go in a more explicit direction, as might be expected for a city the size (and temperament) of Los Angeles, choosing instead to stick to something more graphic, but not graphic.

“We are Beverly Hills adjacent, so the audience we are speaking to really responds to something like this,” Mr. Dunning said.

Portland Center Stage, Portland, Ore.

“I thought of the bed as a stage idea, where all the action happens, and it’s more than just sex,” she said. “You get to fill in what sex means to you.”

Ms. McNamara said the typeface, called Asphalt, and the color interaction, had a ‘60s feel that differed from the “romance novel with steamy lighting” approach she saw from other theaters.

“There’s something Scooby-Doo about it,” she said of the finished piece.

Not that she hadn’t considered something more bodice-ripping.

“I had a tongue coming out of the bed at one point but that was too much,” she said.

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CreditCincinnati Playhouse in the Park

Cincinnati Playhouse

Steamy Scale: 3

The photographer Tony Arrasmith shot this image featuring the models Brandon Franke, 25, and Jennifer Mahuet, 45, with her in his shirt.

“We wanted it to be sexy and provocative and subtle, not overt, something that told the story but left a lot to the imagination as well,” said Kathy Neus, the theater’s director of marketing and communications.

Unlike complaints that the theater received for its production of “Venus in Fur,” which featured a scantily clad woman, Ms. Neus said the response this time was nil.

“The person with the least amount of clothes on is the man, and people get less upset about that,” she said.

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CreditTheaterWorks

TheaterWorks, Hartford

Steamy Scale: 3

The photographer Emma Mead brought together the actor Patrick Ball, who is in the show, and Kristin Martin, a friend of hers who is not, for this moody image that puts the male body center and shirtless. (The female role had not been cast when it was taken.)

Ms. Mead had not read the play before the shoot, so she had Mr. Ball and Ms. Martin improvise poses with their bodies. The result “doesn’t feel ominous but it has weight to it,” Ms. Mead said. “You’re not just looking at these two beautiful, half-naked people. It’s evocative of the sensuality of the play.”

Ms. McInerney said she liked that within the image, “neither one was necessarily in charge and nobody is at a disadvantage.”

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CreditCity Theater

City Theater, Pittsburgh

Steamy Scale: 4

The designer Vicki Crowley chose this photo of a woman’s derrière covered by a black journal after sifting through scores of stock images of “sex and computers, par for the course when searching for “sex” and “strangers.” She added contouring to the body and a layer of hot pink that hints at a play that’s risqué but demure.

Ms. Crowley said she thought the image struck the right balance between sex and sensibility. “I have small children who ride the bus in the city and they identify my posters,” she said. “This poster did not stand out to them.”

According to Laura R. Greenawalt, the theater’s marketing director, the local port authority rejected the image because the title was too sexual. Facebook’s advertising side approved the image “but they zoomed in on the book only,” Ms. Greenawalt said.

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CreditGeorge Street Playhouse

George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, N.J.

Steamy Scale: 5

David Saint, the theater’s artistic director, said that a black-and-white photo for an interracial cast “felt more dramatic and interesting and sensual and provocative” than color. The theater used two versions of this highly seductive image of the actors Kyle Coffman and JoAnna Rhinehart: this R-rated approach for postcards sent to patrons and subscribers, and a tamer version, with a block covering Ms. Rhinehart’s breasts, for newspaper ads and lobby posters.

There were “a couple of people who called and said my kids saw this or something like that,” Mr. Saint said, but over all the response in this New Jersey town was positive. “Older subscribers weren’t negative but it was more of a ‘oh my,’” he said. “I thought that was good.”

The production, with different artwork, is now at the Philadelphia Theater Company.